The Kikkuli Text. Hittite Training Instructions for Chariot Horses in the Second Half of the 2Nd Millennium B.C

The Kikkuli Text. Hittite Training Instructions for Chariot Horses in the Second Half of the 2nd Millennium B.C. and Their Interdisciplinary Context Peter RAULWING 1. INTRODUCTION Among the cuneiform tablets found in the ancient Near East and the adjacent areas, the literary genre of the Hittite instructions for the training of chariot horses has become—as Johannes A. POTRATZ (1963, 181) noted—“something of a legend” in Hittitology including related philological and linguistic disciplines as well as Near Eastern Archaeology and Egyptology. Together with the Middle-Assyrian instructions on horse training from Aššur (EBELING 1951) we are pro- vided with relatively rare first hand information about certain aspects on how training concepts of chariot horses in the second half of the 2nd millennium have been composed, structured and archived by the Hittite and Middle Assyrian scribes. Examining the history of editions and studies on the so-called “Hittite Horse Texts”—written in the Hittite language on clay tablets using Hittite cuneiform signs—we are confronted with two developments in the history of research. Firstly, although studies on Kikkuli Text have been published (FORRER 1922; HROZNÝ 1931) within a relatively short time span, it took over 30 years before all Hittite Horse Texts available from 1906/07 until 1938 were presented in a single mo- nograph. Secondly, nearly all of the basic text editions of the Hittite cuneiform tablets in KUB and KBo as well as most of the philological, linguistic and hippological comments and mono- graphs are published in German for an academic audience familiar with peoples, languages, history and conventions to render cuneiform sign as well as termini technici from other languages such as Sumerian, Akkadian, Hittite or Old Indic (Vedic) [see chapter 4]. 1 © Peter Raulwing 12 December 2009 Fig. 1: Map of the Hittite empire with the capital Boğazköy/Ḫattuša showing excavation sites with cuneiform tablets and Hieroglyphic-Luvian inscriptions. RAULWING/MEYER 2004, 499 Fig. 3 after Norbert OETTINGER. Taking into consideration that on one hand studies on the Hittite horse training texts published in English do not specifically provide an introduction to the genre and problems related to the Hit- tite Horse Texts and on the other hand, that a completely new hippological interpretation was suggested by Frank STARKE in 1995 which declared all former interpretations obsolete, it may be worth presenting a short overview on the Kikkuli Text and the training of Hittite chariot horses in the second half of the 2nd Millennium B.C., in English to an interdisciplinary readership. 2. NAME AND CONTENT OF THE “KIKKULI TEXT” The so-called “Kikkuli Text” was discovered in the first campaign 1906–07 of the Boğazköy/Ḫattuša excavation in Anatolia (Turkey; see Fig. 1) led by the Assyriologist Hugo Winckler (1863–1913), and is named after its author, Kikkuli the “horse trainer from the land of Mittani”, as he introduces himself in the first line of the first tablet of his training instructions. 2 © Peter Raulwing 12 December 2009 KUB I 13 I 1f.: [Transliteration of the Hittite cuneiform signs] Line 1: UM-MA IKi-ik-ku-li li LÚa-aš-šu-uš-ša-an-ni Line 2: ŠA KUR URUMi-it-ta-an-ni [Translation] Line 1: “Thus [speaks] Kikkuli, the horse trainer Line 2: from the land Mittani” Fig. 2: Fourth tablet of Kikkuli Texts. Berlin, Vorderasiatisches Museum. Following A. KAMMENHUBER’s edition (1961), the training program of the Kikkuli Text is set to start in autumn and is based on a detailed schedule of at least 184 days of training units including instructions for feed and water rations, as well as horse care and management. In combination 3 © Peter Raulwing 12 December 2009 with certain training units, feed and water for the horses are also withheld intentionally. The horses spend time in their stables, where they receive special treatment such as massages or blankets. If necessary, the horses are fitted with muzzles. Furthermore, the horses are put out to pasture. The training units are performed at different parts of the day, covering a time frame from early morning to midnight. Although the number of each training day of the Kikkuli Text is not given (or has nor survived) and must be reconstructed from the single units and the time of day given in the cuneiform tablets, we can deduct that Kikkuli “the horse trainer from the land of Mittani” developed a training schedule for chariot horses that was considered worth inclusion in the royal archive of the Hittite capital Ḫattuša (see VAN DEN HOUT 2002 with an instructive overview on “Hittite Literature”). 3. THE LITERARY GENRE OF THE KNOWN AS “HITTITE HORSE TEXTS” AND HITTITOLOGICAL NOMENCLATURE As seen above, the tablets of Kikkuli and his colleagues from Mittani can be classified as belong- ing to the genre of the so-called “Hittite Horse Texts”. The tablets and fragments were found in the archive of building E on the western slope of the Büyükkale in Boğazköy/Ḫattuša (RAUL- WING/MEYER 2004, 493, Fig. 2). More tablets came to light in the layers excavated under the di- rection of Kurt BITTEL (1907–1991) in the 1930’s. The Hittite texts and fragments dealing with the training of chariot horses—distinguished in German-speaking publications into “Old” and “New Hittite Horse Texts” to reflect when they have been found—were grouped by Emmanuel LAROCHE in his Catalogue des textes hittites (1971) as CTH 284–286. In short, studies on the Hittite Horse Texts refer to the naming convention as shown in Figure 3. CTH Training Instruc- Named in Studies on Hittite Horse Texts (LAROCHE 1971) tion as “Old Horse Texts” 284 I “Kikkuli Text” “New Horse Texts” 285 II “Training Instruction with a Ritual In- troduction” “New Horse Texts” 286 III “Purely Hittite Training Instruction” Fig. 3: Naming convention of the Hittite Horse Texts in Hittitological studies. Annelies KAMMENHUBER (1932–1995), Grande Dame of the Hittite Horse Text, who published the fundamental transcription and translation in her Hippologia hethitica (1961) as a result of her intimate knowledge of the Hittite cuneiform tablets, was able to demonstrate that tablets I–IV of TRAINING INSTRUCTION I, containing 1080 lines, form one continuous text. This fact becomes especially apparent at the transition from tablet II to tablet III; thus, the modern naming of these four tablets as “Kikkuli Text” seems justified. However, this is not the case for TRAINING IN- STRUCTION II and III which have not been composed by Kikkuli. Those two training instructions must be separated from the Kikkuli Text due to certain linguistic and grammatical features: 4 © Peter Raulwing 12 December 2009 TRAINING INSTRUCTION II and TRAINING INSTRUCTION III are written in “correct” Hittite whereas any Indo-Aryan termini technici—with the exception of Kikkuli’s profession, mentioned in the colophon of TRAINING INSTRUCTION II (tablet III line '46)—are missing, as KAMMENHUBER (1961, 42–52) elaborated in her philological comments of her edition. In contrast to A. KAMMENHUBER, Erich NEU (1936–1999), one of the most renowned Hittitolo- gists in the second half of the 20th century, made important contributions towards the research on the Hittite Horse Texts. First, NEU succeeded in demonstrating that tablets I–IV of the Kikkuli Text found in 1906/07 are in fact a copy by a Hittite scribe working in the 13th century B.C. who copied the original text of the 15th century B.C. The scribe of the 13th century adapted the Mid- dle-Hittite graphical use of cuneiform signs to the ductus commonly used—and therefore charac- teristic and typical—of his time. In other words, the Hittite scribe had “modernized” the Middle- Hittite use of cuneiform signs (NEU 1986, 161). Therefore, it was not the original tablets of Kik- kuli and his staff that were found—NEU (1986) convincingly dated the lost original of the Kik- kuli Text to the Middle-Hittite epoch—, but a Neo-Hittite copy of it written in the 13th century B.C. Furthermore, following NEU’s cogent palaeographic and philological arguments, the relative-chronological order of TRAINING INSTRUCTION I–III, proposed by KAMMENHUBER 1961, must be fundamentally revised. NEU’s important results (as shown in Figure 4) lead to an exact inversion of KAMMENHUBER’s proposal. TRAINING INSTRUCTION I (Preserved cuneiform tablet in Berlin; see Fig. 2) ↓ Lost Middle Hittite original of the Kikkuli Text (15th century B.C.) ↓ TRAINING INSTRUCTION III Original (CTH 286) Middle-Hittite original (the so-called Purely Hittite TRAINING INSTRUCTION) (End of the 15th century B.C.) ↓ TRAINING INSTRUCTION II Original (CTH 285) Middle-Hittite original (the TRAINING INSTRUCTION with a Ritual Introduction) (ca. 14th century B.C.) ↓ TRAINING INSTRUCTION I Copy (CTH 284) Neo-Hittite copy of the lost Middle-Hittite original (the Kikkuli Text) (13th century B.C.) Fig. 4: Relative chronological order of the Hittite Horse Texts. NEU was also able to demonstrate that the Hittite Horse Texts form part of a practice, attested since the 15th century B.C. in Ḫattuša, to codify available knowledge in written form as archived regulations and instructions show. Certainly, this does not mean that the Hittites did not have any 5 © Peter Raulwing 12 December 2009 written “training instructions” before archiving the Kikkuli Text, thinking of Anitta of Kuššara (ca. 1700 B.C.), Ḫattušili I. (early 16th century B.C.) or Muršili I., the grandson of Ḫattušili (KLENGEL 1999), nor does the fact that the Kikkuli Text is the most ancient specimen of its kind known so far in the Ancient Near East allow the conclusion that these instructions were the ex- clusive domain of the speakers of Indo-Aryan speakers.

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